Human Resource & Payroll Management Blog

As one of leading experts on collaboration and innovation, you may have had the chance to read Tammy Erickson’s blog posts and/or articles for Harvard Business Review, as well as her many books on managing the generations. Her latest book What’s Next Gen X discusses the “implications of organizational and technological changes” for this generation’s future. Recently I had the chance to catch a webinar she did over at HR.com. The webinar Why Gen X Has the Leaders We Need Now includes many of the central ideas of this post and contains interesting ideas on the leadership potential of Gen X.

During the Webinar, Erickson, established the key factors that have brought Gen X to where they are today, including the economy, changing world order, the Internet, entry of women into the workforce and divorce rates. All of these factors worked together to build a generation that is self-reliant, mistrustful of institutions, rule-morphing, tribal, information-savvy, and determined and dedicated parents. While there is still some debate around how much generational differences should be top of mind, experts like Erickson, argue that there is definitely an important difference between boomers, Gen X and Gen Y.  The experts who took part in the HR Raging Debates forum held a variety of sometimes contradictory opinions on whether or not these differences matter. From where I stand, I can’t see how taking these differences into consideration can do anything but benefit an organization’s talent management efforts, so long as it does not detract from all other considerations. It is one consideration of many to work into the talent management equation.

What’s interesting about Erickson’s examination of Gen X is that she approaches it from the perspective of the Gen X employee giving practical advice on how to thrive in the workplace and achieve what is most important to them. This advice also includes insights into how organizations can be flexible and meet the individual needs of their Gen X employees.

Equally important, Erickson, provides steps for “attracting and retaining Xers” including providing family friendly flexibility, minimizing moves that sever social connections and leveraging their entrepreneurial instincts. One of the most unique steps is giving these employees choice and control over their career paths. While we may all know this is a must—can we say we actually doing it? We need to ensure there’s room in the “process” to have a two-way dialogue that encourages this choice and control, and that the talent management process is not a static event where employees are robotically walked through a check list.

How are you working with employees to ensure they have a degree of choice and control over their career path?

We must decide to give every customer our best service, no matter how we feel, whether they deserve it or not, no matter what is happening around us.

The right attitude begins with our choice to feel good about ourselves. You cannot help someone else unless you feel good yourself. It is as simple as that. We choose our mood each day when we get up. We choose to smile or frown. Here are some thoughts on setting our mood, which in turn sets our attitude.

Our thoughts control our feelings

Many of our thoughts are “automatic”, learned from past experiences and tucked into our subconscious for release at the right moment.

An example of this would be when you get in the car to go to work. We turn the key and nothing happens. You think; “this is terrible, I’ll be late for work.” The thought “this is terrible” came without thinking. Prior experiences have caused this reaction. You start feeling frustration and anxiety that will follow you all day. A positive response would be “The kid must have left the lights on, again. I’ll call the tow truck and have another cup of coffee.” This is a slight annoyance at most.

Our feelings set our moods, and our mood sets the level of customer service we provide

Our mood determines how we answer the phone, how we greet people, how we concentrate and how well you satisfy your customer’s needs.

To always provide excellent customer service you must be free of all negative thinking. This starts when you wake up in the morning. We decide what our mood is going to be. We can choose good or bad.

So if it is up to us, what do we do to get started in the right mood?

• Take a minute to tell yourself that this is going to be a good day.
• Use notes on the mirror, or notes left somewhere where you will see them.
• Put a note in your cube, or on the phone to remind yourself that it is easier when you are in a good mood.

Don’t let the happenings of the day get you down. Try to catch the automatic thoughts and replace them with positive thoughts. This sounds simple, but it isn’t. These thoughts come fast, they may be fragmented sentences; they may not be verbalized.

By putting yourself in a good mood and maintaining that mood, you can concentrate on your customer’s issues and provide them with excellent customer service.

Visit the business section of your local bookstore and you’ll discover many books promising you the latest and greatest insight for becoming a better manager. Each one features a little bit different twist, a unique title or a catchy story. Most contain some good ideas. Some even deliver great ideas. But who has time for all of that reading? Today, let’s boil down the bulk of management literature into 3 very basic rules.

Rule #1 If you make an exception for one, you must be willing to make an exception for everyone.

Employees want to be treated fairly. Yet managers continually find excuses to make exceptions to the rules to satisfy a request from a friend, to give in to someone who nags, or to avoid having to say “NO”. In any case, Rule #1 makes it easy. It’s always “no” unless you can always say “yes”. Does that mean you don’t need the rule? It may not; it depends on the exception granted.

Example:

Your company has a policy automatically terminating employees who are no-call, no-show for two consecutive days. An employee calls in on day three and reports she was stranded in the wilderness over the weekend and finally rescued late last night. After verifying the facts, you will make an exception to the two-day rule and would no doubt do the same for anyone under a similar set of circumstances.

However, policies requiring frequent exceptions should be re-evaluated. Question why the policy exists. If it’s not legally required, then perhaps it should be eliminated. If it is legally required, change the policy to eliminate the need for exceptions. Fair treatment of employees, through well developed and implemented policies, sets the cornerstone for solid, positive employee relations.

Rule #2 Do the Right Thing and Do it Right the First Time.

This seems like such an easy lesson, yet we all violate this rule when we choose to cut corners to save time. We justify that the job we are doing is still ‘good enough’, but the difference between ‘good enough’ and doing the ‘right thing’ could make the difference between your company surviving and excelling.

When we put less than 100% into our work, we are more likely to need to re-do tasks and justify our behavior. When we ‘do the right thing’, our tasks are soon completed, with the satisfaction of knowing the job was well done. ‘Good enough’ has no standard definition; it means something different to each and every person. By contrast, ‘the right thing’ is well defined by policy, culture, ethics and mores. When we do the right thing, everyone knows what behaviors and outcomes are expected.

Rule #3 Treat others as you want to be treated.

Using the second rule as an example, how can managers count on employees to do the right thing if they don’t do it themselves? In HR, we know that in departments with poor managers, employees are disrespectful and unruly and often, the department is in chaos. These symptoms indicate a manager who lacks respect for his/her employees and fails to treat everyone fairly. Yet ironically, when called in to explain the department’s performance, the same manager presumes fair treatment from his/her managers.

Good managers think before taking action, asking themselves if this is how they would want to be treated. If you think of others first, you will also benefit.

Three basic rules implemented with conviction will serve you well. And they are easily shared.

Salaries are always an issue inside any company.  Every manager believes he or she has the best performers who need more money. Every HR manager is trying to keep salaries within the equity constraints of the company’s compensation plan and budget. For CEO’s, salaries can be one of their biggest headaches.

Managers often believe that it is imperative to pay their best employees outside of established parameters to keep top performers happy and on the job.  They worry about losing critical employees to competitors because of a lack of competitive compensation practices.  It’s fairly safe to assume the information being shared by managers is coming from employees within their department.  Most managers don’t have time to investigate the salary plans of competitors.  But they do find time to run to the CEO with their fears.  Without solid compensation goals and plans for staying in line with or above the competition, it’s difficult for your CEO to discern fact from fiction.

HR can be a real hero for providing your Senior Executives with a regular comparative analysis of salaries from your recruiting areas, what is currently being paid, and how your salaries compare with the competition.  Utilizing this data, your executives can establish the company’s position on wages/income for your employees in relation to the competition.   Do you want to be at par or perhaps in the upper range of the recruiting market?   Once the company communicates its position to everyone within the organization, staying on target and compensation management becomes much easier.  Everyone is working from the same blueprint and understands the goals and objectives.

In this economic environment, it’s not just salary that attracts talent, however.  Your compensation program should consider benefits that are outside the box like parking fees, toll tags, annual guaranteed educational experiences, sign-on bonuses,  project completion bonuses, or even use of a car for driving around during the day, to name a few.  Employees are becoming savvier about the “total compensation package”.  So, companies can look for innovative programs with a high ROI to attract talent without always spending compounding salary dollars.

The key is finding the right information from the best source within the timeframe that it is needed.  If you can’t afford to buy a survey, you can build your own.  It’s not that difficult and there are several excellent resources, including free information at www.bls.gov .  Once you’ve built your survey, you can use the data to build a competitive compensation model.

A strategic position in the labor market is best driven by a dynamic compensation program based on external competitiveness, internal equity and the company’s financial ability to pay.

It’s not easy for many people to talk about themselves at a party, let alone complete a formal analysis of themselves that will be scrutinized by their managers. Maybe it’s because it is potentially awkward that the self-evaluation portion of performance management often gets overlooked.

To make matters worse self evaluations are still viewed as something an employee undergoes—like a painful surgical procedure. It is little wonder that at companies where this is the case, the entire performance appraisal is a dreaded annual event.

Including employee self-evaluations as part of your performance appraisal process and making sure they are seen by employees in a positive light is vital to empowering your employees and creating a cohesive corporate culture. Employees are not passive participants in your workplace, so they shouldn’t be passive participants when it comes time to their annual appraisals. Giving them an active and important role to play in the performance management process is vital to their engagement in the process as well as in their day-to-day work.

A recently published article entitled Why Are Employee Self-Evaluations So Important? looks at some of the drivers and benefits of employee self-evaluations. If your organization doesn’t currently encourage employee self-evaluations, take a few minutes to take a look at it.

What do you think? Are there other benefits to employee self-evaluations? Have you encountered any challenges with them?

Part II Turnover

Terminations or turnovers can have advantages -an opportunity to add new players with innovative ideas is never a bad thing. Yet, turnover is costly. Depending on the level of skills and experience, you can expect the loss of an employee to cost the company somewhere between one and half and three times their annual salary.

Establish goals for controlling turnover in key positions. Knowing your company’s business strategies and objectives will help determine which positions will need high priority replacements when opened through turnover.

First, look inside. What programs do you have in place to develop your internal talent to step up when the opportunity presents itself? Setting up an organization development plan, including growth strategies for up and comers, can keep the intellectual property inside the organization while satisfying the career plans of top performers. Not only will this help fill critical positions quickly but it also helps retain key talent. Investing in their future is an effective, strategic investment in your business.

Use the same recruiting skills normally exercised on external talent to keep track of your internal candidates. Check on their satisfaction in the workplace. When you detect dissatisfaction or restlessness, begin marketing their talents to other managers inside your business. Although there may not be a permanent or long term growth solution, there are options for dealing with the restless spirit of your valuable human resources.

Next, identify positions where the need for creativity may mean moving people in and out on a regular basis. This creative approach to talent retention is building momentum. Taking a cue from small businesses where employees often have several job responsibilities, bigger businesses are stretching talent by expanding and diversifying job responsibilities to keep employees engaged. Maybe you have a short term opening due to a health absence, or need a special skill on a big project. Knowing your talent repository, you can identify and utilize specialized skills or interests.

These engagement tips can help you keep talented employees while controlling costs and retaining important intellectual and skills capacities.

Next time: Strategic goals in your compensation plans

For Human Resources, perhaps more than any other department in the company, the process for picking and choosing strategic goals is more complex than it may appear at first glance.

Simply put, strategic objectives are targets developed specifically to direct organizational activity, moving the business from where it is to where it wants to be within a defined timeframe. Strategic refers to the course set by the organization to be sustainable, competitive or even a future leader in your marketplace. So, when your CEO asks for HR’s strategic objectives, you will be developing measurable activities related to the organization’s future success. No small task. And how exactly do you meet this challenge when you’re the office of hiring, firing and salary management?

Hiring is a highly visible activity within the scope of your responsibilities. But, although you may have influence in this area, you may not have control. The same is less likely to be true in situations related to termination and is somewhat grayer when it comes to salary management. In short, what you do affects departments all across the board, not just Human Resources. This complicates your process; which strategies are the most strategic?

In hiring, the CEO is looking to you to keep all the departments staffed with the best candidates. Strategies in this area should be linked to identifying, hiring and retaining the best talent. And your tactics can include:

• Cultivating relationships with talent not yet on the market. Build a relationship with those folks while they aren’t on the market or even if you don’t currently have an opening, so when the time is right, you are first on their list.
• Setting your company up as the primary potential employer in your industry. To be the employer of choice includes having the managers of choice in place and building a strategy for internal talent management. When your current employees are happy they are going to tell everyone they know how much they like their workplace. Word of mouth remains your best recruiting tool. Look for more on this topic in future articles.
• Develop a wish-list of talent for specific critical positions within your company. When these positions come available you will have an immediate list of potential candidates. These candidates may be internal as well as external.

Developing a long term plan for staying on top of the changing dynamics and demographics of the workforce can be challenging. Keep your focus on the company’s strategic plan, aligning your personnel strategies with the long-term business plan.

Next time: Strategic Objectives for Handling Turnover

On December 21, 2009, President Obama signed legislation extending the COBRA premium subsidy originally established under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (“ARRA”). Under the ARRA, only individuals who were involuntarily terminated and who lost group health insurance coverage before December 31, 2009 were eligible to receive the subsidy. Moreover, the subsidy was only available for nine months of coverage.

The new legislation extends federal COBRA health coverage cost subsidies for 6 additional months for a total of 15 months of subsidized coverage. The extension applies to those COBRA beneficiaries whose nine-month premium subsidy under the ARRA had expired. The legislation also extends the qualifying event deadline to February 28, 2010. The legislation actually amends the ARRA provisions that required terminated employees to have been eligible for COBRA coverage by December 31, 2009, and now clearly says that the terminated employee only must have been terminated by December 31, 2009, even if COBRA eligibility isn’t effective until some time in 2010. Although the December 31, 2009 deadline has been amended, the result is the same: come February 28, 2010, the employees need not actually be COBRA-eligible, they just have to have been involuntarily terminated by that date.

In addition, the legislation gives beneficiaries whose subsidy expired and who didn’t continue to pay the full unsubsidized premium the opportunity to receive retroactive subsidized coverage. For example, a beneficiary whose nine months of subsidized coverage ran out November 30, 2009 and who didn’t pay the unsubsidized premium for December 2009 now has the option to pay his or her 35 percent share of December’s premium in January 2010 and, upon doing so, would receive COBRA coverage for December.

This legislation requires employers to notify current and future COBRA beneficiaries of the new 15-month premium subsidy. Additionally, it permits employers to offset future COBRA premiums or issue refund checks for beneficiaries who “overpaid” their COBRA premiums by paying unsubsidized premiums but who are now eligible for retroactive subsidized coverage.

The entire text of the legislation, including instructions for retroactive payment of premiums and notification requirements, is contained in Section 1010 of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act 2010, available here.

The Bottom Line

Employers and plan administrators should notify current and future COBRA beneficiaries of the new 15-month premium subsidy, and current COBRA beneficiaries of their right to extend receipt of the subsidy. Employers should also contact their payroll administrators to determine the easiest way to offset future COBRA premiums or issue refund checks to beneficiaries that overpaid their premiums.

Not too long ago, I picked up an old, worn book my husband had purchased at a flea market. The $2.00 sticker was still affixed and, before I started reading, I could not have anticipated how much value there would be between the covers of that flea market “find.”

The book is titled “The Worlds Great Letters.” The oldest letters are an exchange between Alexander the Great and King Darius III ; the most modern letter in this 1940 publication is a letter from Thomas Mann renouncing the Hitler regime for its crimes.

In between all of these wonderfully informative and engaging letters, I found myself especially intrigued by one written by Michelangelo, in 1506, to Maestro Giulliano, Architect to the Vatican. I have thought back to this letter repeatedly, and considered how timeless its lessons are to the management of human resources.

Michelangelo’s assignment

Michelangelo had been summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II to build his tomb. The specifications that Michelangelo submitted were on a gigantic scale, calling for a three story edifice with forty major statues in bronze and marble. The Pope was demanding and politically ambitious, and the scale of the project likely seemed to Michelangelo an appropriate and necessary tribute to His Holiness’ stature.

The Pope’s head architect, however, wanted his own nephew to create the work and set about discrediting Michelangelo and “poisoning the mind” of the Pope against him. Michelangelo recounts that the Pope subsequently withheld funds necessary for the project. “…I asked him for some of the money required for the continuance of my work. His Holiness replied that I was to come back again on Monday; and I went on Monday, and on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, and on Thursday – as His Holiness saw. At last, on the Friday morning, I was turned out…”

Michelangelo fled to Florence, and the Pope soon summoned him, through another of his architects, to return to complete the work. In his letter Michelangelo recounts how he “lost all hope” in seeing that the Pope did not intend to fund the project, and how he feared for his life because of the politics surrounding the project. Michelangelo, in his letter, now sets the terms and conditions. “Give His Holiness to understand that if he really wishes to have this tomb erected it would be well for him not to vex me as to where the work is to be done, provided that within the agreed period of five years it will be erected in St. Peter’s, on the site he shall choose, and that it be a beautiful work, as I have promised.”

Timeless lesson to human resources management

It took three papal decrees and the threat of war against the Florentine Republic for Michelangelo to return to Rome. The project languished as, for four years, he was reassigned (to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel). A year after that, Pope Julius II died. At the whim of heirs and future Popes, Michelangelo was required to change the plans five times, and the project was never completed.

In Pope Julius II, we see a “boss” who has set an expectation that his projects must be grand and self-serving. From Michelangelo’s letter, it is clear that he understood the financial requirements of the work, yet he also understood that it would take a colossal project design to satisfy the Pope’s colossal ego. How often, today, do CEOs send inadvertent signals to their workforce that those best rewarded will be those who feed the executive’s ego, rather than those who make sound, but difficult, business decisions?

We see, too, the imperative of budgeting money and time adequate to the task. Michelangelo’s anger at being fully invested in his work, without the means to complete it, is a modern day dilemma. The difference between success and failure in an enterprise is very often employees who are fully engaged in their work, and who feel supported by management. The action of Pope Julius II in withholding resources, and then restoring them; in committing to the project, then assigning Michelangelo other work; in promising commissions, but not paying them – these are the kinds of actions that, even today, will cause the best employees to “flee.”

Assessing negative information

There is a lesson for today’s managers, too, in assessing negative information brought to them by others in the organization. Undoubtedly the Pope was aware, or could have determined, that his head architect had a nephew, Raphael of Urbino, whom he wished to employ in Michelangelo’s place. With or without that information, we know that the Pope sabotaged the completion of his own project by allowing someone in his line of control to harass and alienate a high talent individual who was critical to its success.

Today, just as with this situation in the early 1500’s, an employee who is angry and embittered is likely to attempt to take control over the employment relationship. From the safety of Florence, Michelangelo agreed to complete the tomb, but on his terms. In your company, the alienated employee may engage in “take it or leave it” negotiations over commissions, take time off when it is most inconvenient for your production schedule, or regularly flaunt your dress code. Others may seek to restore personal dignity or “balance the scales’ by filing a lawsuit.

In the end, after making five changes to the project plans after Pope Julius II died and after 40 years of effort to fulfill his contract, the only visible result was a single statue of Moses. How often have you seen in your company that, when the vision is lost, the project flounders?

Whether you are an executive, a human resources professional, or a direct supervisor of employees, Michelangelo’s historical letter can offer important lessons. History makes it clear that Pope Julius II’s grand project did not fail for lack of expertise or commitment on the part of its designer and artist. For all of us who work with people, it is instructive to consider what obstacles we might be creating in our own work environments to limit the creativity and accomplishments of our own Michelangelo’s, our most talented people.

A few weeks ago our mail server went down. After we brought it back the email address was filled with spam. While we were sorting out the spam we received an email from one of our customers. Her email got lost in the spam and we missed it. About a week later we got a message from the customer stating that it was unacceptable to go a week without a response. The message was a bit “short”, and it sounded like she was upset.

As soon as we realized we had let her down, we got right to resolving her issue and gave her some free service to make up for our mistake.

After I explained how the lack of an answer happened, she was very gracious; after we got her issue resolved she was very happy with our service.

We learned a valuable lesson about customers. They may seem difficult at times, but these are really laps in communication. With emails, there is no way to express emotion. What may seem like only a direct tone to the writer may be perceived as something more negative to the reader.

As with telephone conversions, when providing a service to the customer, we need not judge the customer, but listen to their complaint and get to what they really need.

This approach will bring the most “difficult” customer around to your side and lead them to a positive experience. The kind of experience that will bring them back again and again.

Situations that produce difficult customers happen because something has failed and the customer been inconvenienced. The customer arrives at our door or phone with a negative frame of mind. It’s what happens next that determines if they deal with us again or goes off to tell others about the experience they have had.

The trick is not just to fix the issues, but to let the customer know that you care about them and that you take responsibility for the mistake. Not every situation can be fixed, but it is how you tell the customer that you cannot fix it that is important.